Sex and Fury

Japanese yakuza sexploitation; supposed to be a major influence on Tarantino’s Kill Bill. It was kind of disappointing; the swordfights are not especially well-choreographed, and Christina Lundbergh is pretty much a dud as a lovelorn American spy speaking painfully stilted English. The plot is more complicated than it needs to be, the revolutionary good guy is incredibly lame with a lameness matched only by the police who keep letting him escape after his botched assassination attempts (that’s pretty funny, actually). As you’d expect, there are a bunch of largely unmotivated sex scenes and a heaping helping of gratuitous violence, but none of it goes anywhere in particular, and the perversion and viciousness is all pretty rote (women on women whipping in front of a picture of Jesus while organ-music plays and a bunch of nuns look on…eh, okay.)

Still, it earns its reputation to some extent on the strength of the performance of the star, Reiko Ike as Ocho. The scene where she leaps out of the bathtub nude and cuts a swath of death through a passel of treacherous gamblers is probably the movie’s high point…though the climactic scene, where, again mostly nude, she again chops away at a phalanx of baddies, is also great. She never actually looks like she’s a master swordsman, necessarily, but she’s very charismatic and intense; she’s got the fluid stalking thing down, not to mention the deadly glare. There’s a sequel which I’m going to watch shortly, so obviously there was some appeal.

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I’ve got this one in my Netflix queue; I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. Is the sequel called Female Yakuza Tale? I’ve seen that one, and it was pretty great, at least in terms of exploitation and general craziness. It ends with a brawl between about 50 naked women and an bunch of gangsters. And the lead is really good; apparently she was a regular in the Japanese exploitation films of the time.

I also recently saw Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion, which was also quite enjoyable. It was full of torture sequences and the like, and plenty of ridiculous women-in-prison stuff like shower scenes and lesbian sex. And the end is a doozy of a crowd-pleaser, again with the lead actress striking a great figure. Now I’ve gotta see the sequels.

Looking on IMDB, it appears that Female Yakuza Tale is the sequel to Sex & Fury, so yes, you should enjoy it. Ike was also in a couple of Kinji Fukasaku's Yakuza Papers films; I really need to watch that series one of these days. And in other IMDB research, I see that Meiko Kaji, the star of the Scorpion films, also played Lady Snowblood. Man, I love these crazy Japanese exploitation movies.

I’d really like to see Scorpion; it isn’t available through netflix at the moment I don’t think. I tried to track it down before I did my WIP essay, but couldn’t get a copy. Hopefully I’ll see it at some point….

Oh, I love Kill Bill, but it’s definitely also cool to see the inspirations. I should see Tattooed Life; I like Suzuki, even if I don’t always understand him. Pistol Opera was insane, but pretty awesome. Tokyo Drifter was also quite good. I still need to see Branded to Kill too…